Writing treatment that involved repeated copying and recall of target words was implemented with 8 individuals with severe aphasia in order to discern the best candidates for the treatment. Four of the 8 participants had strong positive responses to the copy and recall treatment (CART), relearning spellings for 15 targeted words during 10 to 12 weeks of treatment and up to 5 additional words during a month-long homework-based program. Of the 4 other participants, 3 learned the spellings of some target words but failed to reach criterion, and 1 had a poor treatment outcome. Insights regarding possible factors that limited success were gained by examination of individual responses to treatment as well as performance on the pretreatment assessments of semantic, phonological, and orthographic processes. Among the factors associated with success were (a) consistent, accurate completion of daily homework, (b) a relatively preserved semantic system, (c) the ability to discern words from nonwords, and (d) adequately preserved nonverbal visual problem-solving skills. Aphasia severity and minimal pretreatment spelling abilities did not necessarily limit the response to treatment. Participants with positive treatment outcomes demonstrated improved spelling of target words following repeated copying within a single treatment session, and accurately completed daily writing homework. Thus, pretreatment assessment and stimulability within initial treatment sessions provided indications of likely outcome.

In this paper, we report a detailed analysis of the impaired performance of a dysgraphic individual, AD, who produced similar rates of letter-level errors in written spelling, oral spelling, and typing. We found that the distribution of various letter error types displayed a distinct pattern in...

Understanding how the mappings between orthography and phonology in alphabetic languages are learned, represented and processed has been enhanced by the cognitive neuropsychological investigation of patients with acquired reading and writing disorders. During the past decade, this methodology...

We report patterns of dysgraphia in participants with primary progressive aphasia that can be explained by assuming disruption of one or more cognitive processes or representations in the complex process of spelling. These patterns are compared to those described in participants with focal...

We report a right handed patient with right middle cerebral artery infarct who recovered from aphasia and has persisting agraphia and alexia. The types of errors that he showed were similar in writing as well as reading, characterized by spelling errors that would preserve the phonological form...

Recent studies have shown that action observation treatment without concomitant verbal cue has a positive impact on the recovery of verb retrieval deficits in aphasic patients. In agreement with an embodied cognition viewpoint, a hypothesis has been advanced that gestures and language form a...

Deep dysgraphic patients make semantic errors when writing to dictation and they cannot write nonwords. Extant reports of deep dysgraphia come from languages with relatively opaque orthographies. Turkish is a transparent orthography because the bidirectional mappings between phonology and...

Deals with the association of brain injury with name-finding disorders, such as aphasia. Three-stage model of naming; Information on the semantic organization in the brain; Analysis of studies on the psychological nature of the name-finding disorders.

A dual-task paradigm involving concurrent finger tapping and line orientation judgment was used to investigate brain processing differences in early adolescent good readers/poor spellers (dysgraphia), poor readers/poor spellers (dyslexia) and good readers/good spellers. Whereas all groups were...